She fancied herself one of the Love & Light crowd, caring about all life. But when a transgender cashier who self-identified as female got upset when she called her, Sir, she threw a public tantrum on social media and called the cashier’s boss to try to get her fired for rude customer service. She said she was so upset that she cried about it. Was angry about it. And suddenly, just like that, this was no longer about a mildly hostile interaction with one person, it was about the entire LGTBQ (Lesbian/Gay/Transgender/Bisexual/Queer) Community. Straight society had acquiesced to their demands for equality. They got their gay marriage. They had bathroom privileges. They could join the military and kiss in the park. But enough was never enough. Now they wanted “the red carpet treatment.” They wanted the right to discriminate against everyone else. There is, she said, a definitive assault on heterosexuals by these perverse people.
Gone were the platitudes about the sacred nature of all life and the natural equality of people. Now, in the anger-rant, only children and animals mattered because they were innocent. And somehow, through all of this grossly overblown victimization, the cashier was the one who should “get off the Cross,” because, she said, we should not tolerate whiney adults.
Here’s the thing about equality: There is or there isn’t. If there isn’t, it’s because someone stole it. Relinquishing what you stole isn’t the same as giving it. And giving something through “tolerance” already implies that you can take it away when your tolerance level has hit its peak. So, there was never a sense of equality in such a person in the first place.
When we want Love and Light, when we say that is the work we were put on Earth to do, it means we don’t have it and we’re working to get it and to promote it. It means we want desperately to be acknowledged as special because we were 1.) put here, and 2.) put here to help spread the good and the true. But working all of our lives for something we will never obtain isn’t special. Substituting how it makes us feel to tell people that we’re loving for Love isn’t special. It’s common.
The transgender cashier is angry. The customer who called her Sir is angry. Whose anger is warranted and whose is a problem? Whose anger is better? Whose anger is more justified?
Whichever way the pendulum swings… equality.